Download Guiding Principles for Integrated Ecosystem

Planning Principles for Integrated Ecosystem-based Management on
the Central and North Coast of British Columbia,
including Haida Gwaii
Robert G. Lee, Ph.D.
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington 98195-2100
[email protected]
206-685-0879
INTRODUCTION
Ecosystem-based management (EBM) requires the integration of sociocultural,
economic, and biological dimensions of ecological systems. Successful planning for
EBM necessitates integration to occur early in the planning process, and to
simultaneously incorporate information about all three dimensions. Previous experiences
has shown that successful planning is not possible when any one of the three dimensions
is reduced to the others or is used to define options or scenarios to be supported by the
other dimensions (IUCN, UNEP, WWF. 1991). As will be discussed below, recent
biocentric analysis is proving to be no more successful than the pre-existing econocentric
analysis that yielded ambitious timber harvesting plans. Planning that considers only one
dimension as primary produces assessments and plans with serious gaps in knowledge
necessary for ecosystem-based management. A more holistic approach to EBM is
needed. Fortunately, analytical approaches are available for such holistic assessment and
planning.
Sociologists have seventy years of experience in addressing concerns with natural
resources conservation and environmental protection (Firey 1960, 1963). Although
elaborated by others, Walter Firey is the primary originator theory to account for what
sociologists have learned. He developed a holistic and robust conceptual framework for
informing regional- and local-scale planning. His work focused on the integration of
social, economic, and ecological knowledge with the objective of defining how to
achieve natural resources and environmental conservation—what we would today refer to
as “sustainability.” A holistic emphasis on integrating what is socially acceptable,
individually gainful, and biologically possible makes interdisciplinary knowledge the
foundation for planning. Most importantly, Firey’s model provides an integrated
conceptual model for discovering possibilities for sustainable natural resource production
and environmental protection.
More recently, political scientists have developed principles for designing institutions
suited for managing common property resources (Ostrom 1990). Common property
resources are defined as resources for which it is not possible to exclude beneficiaries,
with the result that resources can be degraded or depleted by uncontrolled access or use.
Clean air and water, scenery, biodiversity, and fugitive resources such as fish are
common examples. These design principles also address the concern with resource losses
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that come with unconstrained opportunism. When combined with Firey’s model, these
design principles suggest ways of institutionalizing rules for regulating management and
use of common property resources on the Central and North Coast of British Columbia,
including Haida Gwaii.
Walter Firey’s model, together with institutional design principles suited common
property resources, will be used to answer two of the questions posed in the request for
working papers:
1. At a regional scale, what sociocultural/economic/ecological analysis is required to
support EBM planning and the development of options/scenarios to be used by
sub-regional and local land use planning bodies?
2. Does the integration of sociocultural/ economic/ecological analysis constrain
enquiry, analysis, or scenario development?
A summary of Firey’s framework will be followed by a discussion of its applications for
developing options and scenarios in support of EBM on the Central Coast, including an
exploration of constraints and opportunities resulting from adoption of the integrated
approach. Contrary to the assumption embedded in Question 4 in the request for working
papers, the purpose of integrated analysis of social/cultural/economic and ecological
processes is to delimit adoptable scenarios without limiting enquiry or analysis. The
success of integrated analysis will be defined by ruling out unworkable options and
recommending promising options. A list of principles for guiding development of EBM
plans will conclude the discussion.
NECESSARY CONDITIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE EBM
Conventional discourse on sustainability asserts that EBM needs to simultaneously be
biologically sound, economically feasible, and socially acceptable. This statement has
served well as a general principle, but has proven difficult to implement for designing
management plans and institutions for implementing them. Separate disciplinary
languages have impeded discussions on how integration is possible. Rules for integrating
separate bodies of knowledge have eluded planners, with the result that planning gets
bogged down in competition between advocates for each of the three elements. Little or
no integration is possible when trustful working relationships cannot replace rivalry
between disciplines or political opponents.
The Firey model offers insights into how integration can assure conservation or
sustainability. Perpetuation of resource flows, replentishment of resource stocks, and
protection of biological diversity and desired environmental conditions is only possible
when people value these conditions and share expectations that others will forego
opportunistic practices threatening sustainability. Gain-seeking is not ruled out entirely.
Economic gain is both inevitable and necessary for motivating resource production to
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meet human needs for income and sustenance. Sustainable practices are, hence, both
gainful and non-gainful, but also biologically possible and socially acceptable.
Gain seekers are motivated to voluntarily comply with expected non-gainful practices
because they require the predictability that comes with shared values and expectations.
Unconstrained opportunism threatens everyone by opening the door to a war of all
against all, in which all run the risk of losing natural capital, social order, and future gainseeking. Imposition of administrative order, with the disadvantage of abstract and
inflexible rules, often results from unconstrained individualism and economic
opportunism. In short, resource conservation or sustainability depends on maintenance of
a particular social order, because social order provides common expectations and values
that make it possible for a group of people to set limits on environmental change by
limiting destructive economic opportunism (Firey, W. 1978).
Most importantly, integration of sociocultural, economic, and ecological processes is not
something planners do for people. It is instead accomplished by people interacting in a
functioning social order. Planners can facilitate integration by understanding the
conditions under which resource conservation or sustainability is possible.
Sustainability is problematic in modern industrial societies because loosened societal
expectations have given free reign to economic opportunism (Lee 1997, Bellah et. al
1985). Unconstrained opportunism brings rapid innovation of new technologies and
practices, contributing to the development of new resources and gain-seeking
opportunities. Resource development is a “good news, bad news” story. Some of these
innovations may contribute to more efficient use of limited natural resources, but many
make it possible to alter species and ecological systems in ways that may threaten longterm sustainability. Reduction of natural genetic variability through excessive harvesting
of natural stocks, artificial modification of genetic codes, and destabilization of the
geological substrate by road building are all examples of long-term threats to ecological
functions associated with technological innovations.
PRINCIPLES FOR GUIDING EBM PLANNING
Firey’s model suggests that to attain more sustainable resource practices in modern
societies, planners need to place more emphasis on the creation or protection of social
order. The alternative is state coercion. State coercion doesn’t work well for complex
problems characterized by political rivalries and uncertain and changing knowledge, all
of which are found in disputes over protection and management of natural resource
systems. Collaborative EBM planning processes, especially the Joint Solutions Project
(JSP), reflect growing societal consensus on the need to create or restore social order.
Collaborative processes create social order by building trust among rivals, and yield a
shared understanding that all will be better off by compromising and working together to
solve problems rather than continuing to try to impose their will on others using the
coercive powers of the state.
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Voluntary Consent through Trust-building
Bella (1987:29) has defined trust as
…that sense that allows a people or culture to selectively favor those influences
that are worthy of their freely given consent and commitment. In the absence of
trust, order arises not from freely given consent and commitment but through
coercion and a proliferation of rules and those that administer them.
Individual qualities that evoke trust are honesty, concern, discretion, integrity, and
courage (Bella 1987:30). Organizational practices eliciting trust include (Bella 1987:34):
1. Questions, assumptions, methods, problems, concerns, observations, and
information must be critically reviewed in open discussions, dialogues, and
debates.
2. Such discussions, dialogues, and debates must occur before a commitment is
made to decisions.
3. The formal agenda, timing, participation, and setting for such discussion,
dialogues, and debates must not be determined or dominated by the decisionmaking process itself or those under its direct or indirect authority.
4. All participants in these discussions, dialogues, and debates are to be considered
as equals with the common responsibility of exposing their own views
(assumptions, methods, models, observations, concerns, etc.) to the critical review
of others.
5. The behaviors and outcomes of the decision-making process must be included in
the discussions, dialogues, and debates
6. The process described above must continue over time so as to selectively retain
that knowledge, which best withstands the critical review and accumulated
evidence.
The JSP can facilitate integration of sociocultural, economic, and biological processes by
providing a forum for trust-building. Several major challenges present possible barriers
to integration. Trust-building can help overcome these barriers.
Overcoming Barriers to Integration
Unanticipated Consequences of Biocentric Planning
Many recent ecosystem planning efforts have given primary emphasis to biological
integrity, and considered sociocultural and economic dimensions as secondary concerns
or impacts resulting from protection of biological capital. The Northwest Forest Plan in
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the United States illustrates how such biocentric planning can even have unanticipated
consequences for the biophysical system when meaningful involvement is restricted to
biologists and others whose expertise does not represent operational knowledge and
practical experience.
An emerging crisis of watershed stability is only one of the unanticipated consequences.
Vast areas of federal lands are closed to logging under the Northwest Forest Plan.
Abandoned logging roads have been left unattended, since budgets were insufficient to
either maintain them or remove culverts, bridges, fills, and cut-banks and restore natural
vegetative cover. Failing national forest roads are becoming a major source of unnatural
disturbance. Adverse impacts on fish habitat are the result. The costs of addressing this
problem will escalate exponentially, since chronic slope instability will result from
unattended roads.
The Northwest Forest Plan is not the only recent planning effort to illustrate many of the
problems associated with the imposition of state authority to achieve conservation
objectives. Collaborative planning process focused on trust-building would have
involved a diversity of individuals with both technical expertise and practical knowledge.
Other biological and physical consequences, plus the growth of rural political alienation
and persistent poverty, suggest that few of the state-directed planning efforts may satisfy
Firey’s basic requirements for sustainablility.
Integration of Diverse Human Communities
The JSP faces the challenge of facilitating social integration among several different
kinds of human communities: First Nations peoples living in remote settlements, nonnative rural communities, occupational communities of loggers, log-transporters, and
fishermen (both commercial and sport), and communities united by common interests in
environmental protection, industrial development, and exploitation of natural resource
stocks. These communities have operated semi-autonomously, and have been resistant to
collaborating in the development of common expectations. Despite this history, the most
important task of JSP is to facilitate identification of shared values and development of
common expectations that will provide an enduring sense of shared social order
governing EBM on the Central and North Coast and Haida Gwaii.
Clarification of Economic Opportunities
The JSP also faces the challenge of clarifying gainful and non-gainful resource practices
on the Central and North Coast and Haida Gwaii. Existing tenure arrangements
governing timber harvesting are based, in part, on an unexamined assumption that all
allocated lands will support gainful harvest operations. In fact, only a small fraction of
allocated lands may provide timber receipts sufficient to cover roading, logging, and
obligated silvicultural costs. Allocation of rights to non-gainful harvesting units appears
to be an artifact of the need for corporations to show high asset values to raise capital and
service loans. This institutional fiction may force corporations to behave
opportunistically in exploiting gainful harvest units in order to compensate for losses on
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non-gainful units. As a result, non-gainful practices on non-gainful units could reduce
what is biologically possible on both non-gainful and gainful units without increasing net
economic returns and only meeting the expectations of those who benefit from corporate
profits and jobs in logging and log-transporting. Therefore, existing tenure arrangements
fail to meet Firey’s basic requirements for sustainability.
The institutional fiction embedded in existing tenure arrangements also creates a false
sense of opportunism for aspiring entrepreneurs in First Nation and non-native rural
communities who advocate a fairer distribution of gains from redistribution of tenure
rights. Since timber harvesting will return a profit on only a small fraction of the exiting
tenure base, reallocation of harvesting rights is a false promise yielding economic failure
for most non-corporate gain-seekers.
The JSP also faces the challenge of identifying other economic opportunities that are both
acceptable to all the human communities and biologically possible. Alternative
enterprises might include value-added wood products manufacturing, tourism, and
utilization of miscellaneous resources from terrestrial and marine systems.
Adoption of Shared Rules for Governing EBM
A major task of JSP will be to facilitate the development and adoption of rules for
governing common property resources. Environmental qualities to be protected are
clearly common property resources, as are most of the natural resources of concern to the
various communities. To be effective at integrating the sociocultural, economic, and
biological dimensions, EBM will need to be governed by rules embodied localized social
and institutional order. Such rules will ensure that integration occurs in ways that are
effective in diverse circumstances. To be adoptable, these rules must be developed in
collaboration with the people who are directly affected, and must account for the success
of institutions in sustaining common property resources (CPR) by assuring the
compliance of successive generations of resource producers and users (Ostrom 1990:90).
Most importantly, these rules cannot be effective if developed by experts and imposed by
external governmental authorities. Elinor Ostrom has suggested eight principles guiding
the development of operational rules for managing common property resources:
1. Clearly defined boundaries: Individuals or households who have rights to
withdraw resources from the CPR must be clearly defined, as must the boundaries
of the CPR itself.
2. Congruence between local conditions and rules governing the production and use
of resources: Rules governing the time, place, technology, and/or quantity of
resource utilization are related to local conditions and to rules regulating the use
of labor, materials, and/or money in the production of resource utilization
opportunities.
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3. Collective choice arrangements: Most individuals affected by rules governing
resource production and use have the opportunity to participate meaningfully in
the development and modification of the rules.
4. Monitoring: Individuals assigned official responsibility to audit CPR conditions
and the behavior of resource users are accountable to the users, or are drawn from
the users.
5. Graduated sanctions: Resource users who violate operational rules are likely to
be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and context of the
offense) by other users, by officials accountable to the users, or by both.
6. Conflict resolution mechanisms: Resource users and their officials have rapid
access to low-cost local arenas to resolve conflicts among users, or between users
and officials.
7. Minimal recognition of rights to organize: The rights of resource users to devise
their own institutions are not challenged by external governmental authorities.
For CRPs that are parts of larger systems:
8. Nested enterprises: Resource use, production, monitoring, enforcement, conflict
resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested
enterprises.
Clearly, nested enterprises will be needed to manage CPR on the Central and North
Coast regions of British Columbia and Haida Gwaii. People living in different locations
have different cultural traditions and resource utilization opportunities. Consequently,
rules for resource production and use will develop differently from place to place, and
different cultural practices will necessitate different ways of conducting monitoring,
enforcement and conflict resolution. First Nation communities will have different
knowledge, skills, and practices than recent occupants, and will, in addition, vary among
themselves. Nested enterprises culminating in a regional strategy guided by common
requirements will assure a coordinated approach while also permitting, and benefiting
from, local differentiation.
Clearly defined boundaries must be a collaborative decision, involving stakeholders at all
locations and levels of concern. Boundaries are important for defining the timing,
location, and appropriate technology for utilizing particular resources, including logging,
fishing, recreating, gathering of miscellaneous forest products, and protecting ecological
integrity. Boundary definition clarifies, redefines, and harmonizes resource tenure
institutions. It closes resource pools to “free riders” and develops rules limiting resource
production and use within the boundaries. It is also fundamental to developing nested
enterprises, since regional collaboration will be important for generating agreements on
geographic and institutional boundaries.
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Congruence between local conditions and rules governing the production and use of
resources is necessary to assure ecological adaptability. Rules developed by producers
and users in collaboration with others in a set of nested enterprises will be more likely to
fit local conditions (Lee 1992). For example, each watershed has a unique set of factors
contributing to the quality of fish habitat it provides. Indigenous and local knowledge
can often be instrumental in modifying general rules to suit local circumstances.
Similarly, forest landscapes are so variable that opportunities for sustainable wood
production need to be defined in terms of access, market availability, site productivity,
land suitability and stability, and other situational factors. A general template will not
suffice for planning sustainable EBM.
Collective choice arrangements are fundamental to eliciting the voluntary conformity of
resource users and producers. Ostrom (1990:93) states:
CPR institutions that use this principle are better able to tailor their rules to local
circumstances, because the individuals who directly interact with one another and
with the physical world can modify the rules over time so as to better fit them to
the specific characteristics of their setting.
Firey’s (1960) work shows that individuals are also most likely to forego individual gain
when everyone else is cooperating by practicing restraint in resource utilization. A
democratic process of making choices leads to greater voluntary cooperation.
Monitoring and graduated sanctions are fundamental to internally generated enforcement
of rules. Participants themselves, not external authorities, will be most effective in
maintaining compliance with rules when there is confidence that both external authorities
and internal cooperators will keep their bargains (Ostrom 1990). People are generally
willing to voluntarily comply when they can see that their collective purpose is achieved
and they observe that others are also complying. Coercion is needed when individuals fail
to comply, but is most effective in maintaining voluntary compliance when applied by
resource users themselves through their own institutional processes. The current
movement of law enforcement toward community policing reflects a growing
commitment to this principle. Policing of resource use over a region as vast as the
Central and North Coast and Haida Gwaii can only be effective if residents and users are
themselves involved in monitoring and applying appropriately graduated sanctions.
Conflict resolution mechanisms are important for assuring that disputes are resolving in
ways that are viewed as fair and equitable. Voluntary conformity may decline when
people feel they are subject to impartial justice. Conflict resolution may be formal, as in
the case of courts, or informal, such as judgments by a council of elders. What matters is
that people are assured a fair hearing of their reasons for failing to abide by rules or by
engaging in a dispute with others.
Minimal recognition of rights to organize enable people to form appropriate governing
bodies for adapting practices of local circumstances, making collective choices,
monitoring, applying sanctions, and resolving conflicts. Self-governing bodies for CPR
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management cannot develop or be effective if centralized authorities limit opportunities
for local and regional organization. Self-organization can be more difficult in
circumstances such as the Central and North Coast and Haida Gwaii where disparate
small communities and external interests have few opportunities for face-to-face
interaction.
The JSP might consider these principles for managing CPR as the most effective way of
integrating sociocultural, economic, and ecological processes. As stated above, such
integration is not something planners can effectively do for people. Integration is instead
accomplished by people interacting in a functioning social order. These principles for
CPR management are well-tested attributes of social orders that have demonstrated
commitments to maintaining CPR over many generations.
CONCLUSION
Adoption of these principles along with Walter Firey’s conditions for sustainability
would provide ingredients for beginning to write a constitutional document for EBM on
the Central and North Coast and Haida Gwaii. Principles would most likely need to be
modified to fit geographic and cultural circumstances, but their robustness in other
circumstances around the world assures that can serve as stable reference points.
JSP could facilitate a collaborative process for eliciting agreement on a regional
constitution, within which rules could be developed to suit particular cultural groups,
resource practices, and geographic conditions. Agreement upon overall principles would
assure that differentiated rules would serve common purposes. In short, a commitment to
outcome-based management would allow different communities or groups to serve
common purposes in diverse ways.
Such facilitated regional collaboration would have greater chances of success if it
embodied the abovementioned organizational practices for creating trust. An open,
inclusive process invites risks, but experience has shown that there are greater risks in a
more tightly managed approach to EBM. Even the perception of selective use of
information or exclusion of some stakeholders can undermine the legitimacy of a
planning process, making it far more difficult to elicit voluntary conformity to
conservation programs.
A summary of how the initial questions have been answered will close this discussion.
1. At a regional scale, what sociocultural/economic/ecological analysis is required to
support EBM planning and the development of options/scenarios to be used by subregional and local land use planning bodies?
The most important conclusion from this discussion is that integration of the
sociocultural, economic, and biological dimensions of ecosystems is something best done
by people themselves. The most effective role for the planner is to facilitate a
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collaborative process yielding a principle-based constitutional document. This
constitution could be used to specify agreed upon regional outcomes to be attained by
differentiated groups and communities that are free to develop their own governance
procedures and rules. The principles and agreed upon outcomes can serve as a statement
of what is socially acceptable—what will elicit voluntary conformity to rules for
implementing EBM.
Planners can also facilitate this process by providing knowledge and technical expertise
on what is biologically possible, as well as assessing the gainfulness and technical
feasibility of resource practices. Information on the biological requirements for
perpetuating endangered species or valuable biological resources must be introduced
early in the planning process, so that it can be taken into account in assessing the social
acceptability and gainfulness of particular resource practices. Similarly, information of
the gainfulness of practices such as wood production or secondary manufacturing needs
to be available to all participants in the planning process at the earliest possible time. The
same is true for cultural identities and practices that are fundamental to conserving social
order.
2. Does the integration of sociocultural/ economic/ecological analysis constrain enquiry,
analysis, or scenario development?
An EBM planning process focused on integration by people rather than for people does
not constrain enquiry, analysis or scenario development, since the latter are to a large part
a product of a facilitated collaborative process. However, adoption of Firey’s conditions
for sustainability, together with Ostrom’s CPR design criteria, immediately rule out many
options. Experience in resource planning in other circumstances has shown that for
scenarios to meet the requirements for sustainability, they must be biologically sound,
gainful, and maintain the mutual expectations of a functioning social order to motivate
people to also adopt non-gainful practices. Scenarios favoring one of the dimensions of
ecosystems over others are not sustainable, and should be ruled out. For the Central and
North Coast and Haida Gwaii, this might include continuation of the historic
econocentric tenure arrangements favoring large-scale commercial exploitation, as well
as a biocentric commitment to protecting biological integrity at the expense of human
wellbeing. Integration of sociocultural, economic, and ecological processes through
facilitated regional collaboration will inevitably focus on a few scenarios that appear to
meet the requirements for sustainability.
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Firey, W. 1978. “Environmentalism and the Rediscovery of Limits.” P. 273-288 in T. L.
Smith and m. Singh, eds., Sociocultural Change Since 1950. New Delhi: Vikas.
Firey, W. 1963. “Conditions for the Realization of Values Remote in Time.” Pp. 147-159
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Lee, R.G. 1997. “From Individualism to Healthy Communities: Toward Ecological
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